THE HAPPY FITS
National fencing champion Ross Monteith and orchestra nerd Calvin Langman didn’t exactly get along in high school. However, a chance conversation in 2014 about the success of Youtube cover bands brought the two together to pave a road to quick fortune. Their mix of rocking guitars and electric cello created a unique dynamic, blending their love of rock artists like The Black Keys and folk bands like The Violent Femmes. The resulting music produced a youthful and chaotic frenzy of catchy melodies and raw instrumentals. When the band recruited professional gamer Luke Davis to join the band on drums, The Happy Fits were born. The band’s first single “While You Fade Away” from their debut EP “Awfully Apeelin’” reached #5 on Spotify’s Top 50 Viral USA Chart the first week of its release.

JABLONSKY
Reni Lane Jablonsky’s eponymously named band is the latest incarnation in a career that includes fronting retro-pop duo Fever High with Adam Schlesinger (Fountains of Wayne, Ivy) and Anna Nordeen and playing bass in Brooklyn garage-pop trio, Shining Mirrors. At her core, Reni is a compelling performer (her multi-instrumental skills have supported the likes of Duncan Sheik and Joseph Arthur) and a formidable songwriter who has collaborated with seasoned pros like Howie Day and Linda Perry (Adele, Alicia Keys, Courtney Love). But what most people remember about Reni is her unique, haunting voice. At 19, while attending Columbia University’s creative writing program, she was discovered by Perry who released her major label debut Ready on Universal Motown. The LP’s breakout track Place For Us was featured on VH1, The L Word, and KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic. In the years since Ready, Reni has continued to expand her creative arsenal. She’s recently opened for The XX, Grace Potter, and She & Him, and had various creative collaborations featured in Paste, NPR, Sundance Film Festival and SXSW Interactive.

MARCELLUS HALL AND THE HOSTAGES
Hailing from Minnesota, Marcellus Hall is the founding member of Railroad Jerk, an industrial grunge-folk band whose four LPs on Matador Records helped define the alternative music of the 1990’s. With trademark absurdist, yet poignant, lyrics, Hall went on to form White Hassle, a duo with guitar, harmonica, and drums that pre-dated the White Stripes and the Black Keys. Releasing albums on Orange Recordings (U.S.), Fargo Records (France) and Mazri (Japan) – as well as touring Europe – White Hassle incorporated a thereminist, a second guitarist and a DJ at its live shows before disbanding in 2006. Hall then embarked on a solo incarnation that enlisted the talents of Damon Smith on bass, Matt Martin on keyboard, and Jimmy Ansourian on drums. The quartet (aka Marcellus Hall & The Hostages) played shows in and around New York while recording songs for what would eventually become The First Line LP on Glacial Pace Recordings. Mike Shapiro replaced Jimmy Ansourian in 2010 and the band continues to write and record.

DJ WÏNTER
Underwhelmed by the creative effects of sustained LSD micro-dosing and semi-regular ayahuasca use, songwriter/musican Kid Bowery applied for and, last spring , gained admission into a somatic experiencing trial experiment sponsored by Denmark’s Ministry of Health and Social Affairs. The experiment, which lasted six months, is one he credits as having engendered his breakthrough theory of Contra Ishcemic omni-Consciousness (CIoC) and as his sonic CIoC-practicing alter-ego, DJ Wïnter. “No one gets bored on the fjord!” says Wïnter, in fond reference to the staff and participants of the Christiania-based study who enlisted his turntabling chops to help celebrate the trial’s conclusion through a series of “Midnattsol Dans-in” (or midnight sun dance-in’s), an event the Scandinavian press described as “an historic fortnight of sweaty transcendence.”

*Every Red Door Sessions show is a benefit. Every benefit supports the resistance though direct donation to organizations that fight for reproductive rights and freedoms, arts/legal support for undocumented youth, and an end to climate change denial.